Book Review: The Guest List

A wedding on a remote Irish island becomes a venue for death in this deliciously twisty and compulsively readable whodunit from Lucy Foley. Just as the narrative flits from one point of view to the other, The Guest List turns out to have more tricks up its sleeve than your garden variety mystery, with everyone in the cast united by a tragic event in the past and, therefore, a motive to commit murder. To top it all, Foley holds off on revealing the identity of the victim until almost the very end, which despite its blatantly ridiculous coincidences and incredulous plot turns, adds to the intrigue. A contemporary take on Agatha Christie's locked room mysteries, The Guest List sweeps the reader along through the ebb and flow of the story line — the grief, the jealousies and the simmering tensions — before it all climaxes in a totally engrossing finish.